What’s the best part of cooking a large Thanksgiving meal? For me it’s smelling a turkey cooking in the oven for a long time. It’s a uniquely “Thanksgiving” aroma.

For our mini-Thanksgiving Jim and I cooked a turkey breast instead of a whole turkey. I read about roasting a turkey at high-heat quickly instead of baking at a lower temp, so I thought this would be a good time to try it out. The turkey came out great, but it was really smoky in the kitchen, so be prepared for that. This was hands-down the juiciest turkey that we’ve even made, and it was also the simplest to make. It’s also so much quicker.

Place the turkey breast in a roasting pan and brush with 1/2 of the clarified butter and sprinkle with salt. Use more salt than you think is necessary. If you have an injector you can inject the rest of the clarified butter into the turkey.

Roast the turkey for 1:15 minutes, or until internal temp reaches 160F. Remove from oven and cover with foil. Let rest for 45 minutes. Internal temp should come up to around 175F.

Slice and serve.

By Saved by the Kale

Saved by the Kale http://savedbythekale.com/

That’s the last Thanksgiving recipe for this week. We’ve got a few more Thanksgiving and holiday recipes coming your way next week. ICYMI, yesterday we posted our favorite mashed potatoes recipe.

Mashed potatoes are one of my favorite guilty pleasures. I absolutely love that creamy, airy goodness. Jim likes making mashed potatoes and does it fairly often, but he took it to another level by using a ricer for the potatoes instead of mashing them with a masher. It gives a smooth and delicious finished product… with no lumps!

As you know, we live in the south (the Deep south). People around here love their mayo. Me… not so much. Lots of people put things like mayo, or sour cream, in the mashed potatoes. I don’t understand it at all, those things have no place in potatoes. Thankfully Jim agrees with me on this point and we get to keep it simple with just potatoes, butter, and cream.

Let’s talk gravy for a sec. We usually just have potatoes without gravy… just add some pepper and butter, or a little bit of parmesan, and off you go. On those occasions when we’re cooking something that you can make a gravy from then we definitely like to go in that direction. For our little mini-Thanksgiving last weekend we were able to make some really tasty turkey gravy that went well with the potatoes.

Thanksgiving may be one of the few times a year when you can take your vegetables, smother them with a buttery sauce, and still feel good about it. That’s exactly what we did with our twist on brussels. Nothings screams Thanksgiving quite like cranberries, so we thought, why not spruce up a veggie with some cranberries???

Brussels have definitely grown on me. I wouldn’t touch it as a kid, but I now mostly like it as an adult. It’s still something that I think it’s too bitter to eat straight-up, so I like to add some other strong flavors to help it along. See our bacon & molasses brussels recipe for evidence.

Brown butter is a tasty deliciousness on its own, but the addition of cranberries turns it into a great holiday sauce. The brown butter definitely does not overpower the brussels in this recipe, it gives it just the right balance of sweetness and nuttiness to the dish.